Warren County Book Battle Earns Exposure in National Press

While our local press, including the Royal Examiner, is covering “like a blanket,” some would say, the juvenile library book controversy, today, as I am writing this (Wednesday, July 26), it was given a national boost through the front pages of The Washington Post.

In fact, the Post team was in town a few days, covering a most recent crowded and sometimes belligerent hearing on the action by our Board of Supervisors to withhold 75% of Samuels Public Library funding – the library could be closed by September if certain public demands for withdrawing certain children’s books are not met.

Coming on the heels of the Jennifer McDonald alleged financial fiasco over at the then joint Town-County Economic Development Authority (EDA), our community appears to be making an unwanted mark for its politics and politically funded activities while trying to sell itself as a tourism destination for the DC Metro area with the beauty of the area, ergo a desirable place for hiking, river travel, sightseeing, fine dining and so on.

The current Post piece on the most recent controversy that appears to put our town and county at the head of a parade in many states endeavoring to press libraries to remove certain children’s books that contain LGBTQ passages, as well as what some complainers describe as “pornography” or, at least, too “sexually explicit” for young children.

“The situation in Front Royal, about 70 miles west of Washington at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, marks an escalation of book wars in Virginia and across the country,” the article states.

What caught the eye of this reporter, a writer, and editor for newspapers in several countries as well as The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., was the length and depth of its illustrated article, which turned from page 1 to an entire inside page including texts, a four-column photo of about half the crowd of 120 local citizens, along with two column pix of Samuel’s Library director Michelle Ross, and library defenders Sydney Patton, Tina Johnson, and Kelsey Lawrence.

Front Royal and Warren County’s Samuels Public Library is front page news — NOW too on The Washington Post’s front page. , Library Director Michelle Ross is on the job, but out of the office, at the Eastham Park Shenandoah River Walk. — Royal Examiner File Photos

The crowd scene places the Post reporter/photographer team at the July 10 meeting of the Samuels Public Library Board of Trustees, at which Melody Hotek, 70, officiated at the first meeting of her presidency of the trustee board. The Post described the confrontational crowd as “buzzing and jittery,” which did nothing to ensure any degree of comfort for Hotek.

“This is quite a crowd, and I am nervous,” Hotek was quoted as saying as she accepted the gavel for the first time.

“The clock was ticking,” the Post report says, noting “… the library had only enough money to operate through September unless it could persuade the County to release (the money)” it has put on hold.

Today, the clock is still ticking …